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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23641798">Someone I used to know</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/AkaiMirage/pseuds/AkaiMirage'>AkaiMirage</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Naruto</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Constructive Criticism Welcome, Friendship, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Kid Uchiha Itachi, Kid Umino Iruka, Sad, Uchiha Itachi-centric, Umino Iruka-centric</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 20:53:47</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,589</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23641798</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/AkaiMirage/pseuds/AkaiMirage</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A short story of those moments of "what ifs" and "never was".<br/>Some tears and broken childhood dreams might be in there as well.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>28</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter I - Him & the Child</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Average. The lone word that seemed to follow him from birth all the way up to graduation.</p><p>It didn't matter how much he'd sought change, to spread his wings as the new butterfly. He had always been considered average, by his peers and then by his teachers, and he'd never be a butterfly.</p><p>He'd remain stuck as a worm trapped in that cocoon. All he could do about that fact was weep.</p><p>Even if the people who kept scrunching up their noses at him in distaste would be able to see past his habit of showering the world with fake smiles, Iruka doubted that they would care enough to try to bring him out of his current state of melancholy and pretense.</p><p>While Konohagakure was indeed one of the better shinobi villages to reside in, it was no kinder to foreigners much less orphaned ones.</p><p>It didn't seem to matter that his parents Umino Haruka and Misumi had bled and died for Konoha. It didn't matter that their son had been born in Konoha.</p><p>The fact of the matter was that their name Umino, it's origin clearly speaking of ties to the Mist village, was not a name that any 'proper' leaf nin would bear.</p><p>Even before his parents had died, Iruka could hear those spiteful whispers behind his back usually followed by condescending looks.</p><p><em>'My mommy says I can't play with Mist spies!'</em> Iruka had been 6 years old when he had heard that particular derogatory remark.</p><p>The kid with the ball, dutifully parroting what his parents had thoughtlessly spouted at the dinner table. It stung, terribly so.</p><p>His parents were not rich, having had to seek refuge in the fire nation after the purge of bloodlines began, but they were very warm and gentle folks. The best kind in the world.</p><p>Iruka couldn't understand why people were talking badly of them.</p><p> </p><p>As busy with her upcoming assignment as she may have been, Misumi was as attentive to her only child's mood as her husband was, so it made sense that she would pick up on his sadness.</p><p>He couldn't bring himself to tell her the truth when she asked him what had happened, or why he refused to go to the playground the next day. Much less why he didn't want to go to the birthday party for the neighboring kid he'd been invited to. How was he supposed to tell them that the kid had said such a hurtful thing or that the kid's family was looking down on them?</p><p>So, with that fake smile plastered on his face, he dutifully went to the party, with a carefully wrapped package that was all too big for him to carry, holding it as steadily as he could between his shaking hands.</p><p>With his parents walking as serenely as always behind him, there was no way he could get out of the disaster that was surely lying in wait for him to happen. Call it a sixth sense, or whatever, it was a sense that almost never failed him. For once, he had wished his assumption could've been wrong.</p><p> </p><p>Even now, years later, while he had been careful to not cause trouble, not necessarily out of the goodness of his heart, but more out of pride, he <em>still</em> was subjugated to those same sneers and hurtful remarks that had cut into his soul as that of a knife.</p><p>As far as he could tell, only the jinchuuriki was actively more disliked. He honestly didn't know what people had against him.</p><p>So, it was something of a wonder when he saw those onyx colored eyes for the first time.</p><p> </p><p>Iruka had heard of him, of course, who hadn't? Still, the shinobi standing in front of him, younger by a few years yet exuding superiority, seemed oddly phantom-like.</p><p>Close to a decade later, if asked about his encounters with the clan-killer, Iruka would deny ever have harbored feelings for him, much less <em>positive</em> ones, but here in the moment at the lakeside Iruka had no knowledge of how their friendship would wither and so he was currently smiling shyly up to the expressionless face of the young prodigy.</p><p> </p><p>Iruka, unknowingly named "It" and "problem" in the mind of the genius staring him down, felt his smile wane slightly, unsure of the silence that seemed to have brought the "silence of awkwardness" to a new level.</p><p>"My name means dolphin, but I'd rather be a butterfly." That is the kind of thing no one would ever want to say in front of a widely recognized genius, much less one you admire from afar, no matter how true the statement is.</p><p>Naturally, that is exactly what Iruka found was coming out of his mouth, his mind seconds too late to register what had just happened.</p><p>If the Silence of Awkwardness had been unbearable before, it was nothing compared to this. The chirping of the birds hiding in the treetops sounded more like cackles in the mortified teenager's ears.</p><p>He didn't know what he'd expected from that point, but the pleasant sound of laughter was definitely not it. The Uchiha prodigy had a warm laughter, which is not something you would expect from someone who, for all intents and purposes, was as warm and cheerful as a rock.</p><p>Certainly, that cold exterior could've been what the war, not to mention a less than stellar upbringing (not that Iruka blamed the Uchiha clan-heads, they were oddly affectionate) had demanded of him, yet it warmed Iruka's heart to know that Itachi still knew how to laugh.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Odd. If one word was reserved exclusively for him, then his entire existence would be chalked up to as "odd".</p><p>He never could pinpoint to the thing that seemed to set him apart from the rest of the clan. Once, he had asked his mother, "what was wrong with him?", only to get a tentative smile back.</p><p>He decided then that it was of no use trying to get answers from his parents as they seemed to find his questions unnerving (<em>disturbed</em>).</p><p>Most of the clan kept him at arms length. Always scrutinizing his every movement, questioning his decisions which all stem back to his loyalty for the village at large. Always judging.</p><p>He'd be a liar if he tried to claim it didn't hurt those feelings he spent most of his time suppressing.</p><p>It was during one of those days of suppressing feelings he decidedly did <em>not</em> have for his clan that he spotted <em>The Child</em>.</p><p>In retrospect, Itachi would've been better off leaving the unknown variable to their own devices, yet in that moment Itachi, in a bout of weakness perhaps, decided to ignore the voice of wisdom and walked closer to the child sitting at the lakeside in contemplation.</p><p>The child, teenager really, Itachi realized, as doe-like eyes stared owlishly up at him. The yet to be named teen was clearly older than him, though it didn't seem to matter as the scarred face smiled.</p><p> </p><p>Itachi could count on one hand the number of people that would offer him a smile without expecting something out of him in return, and so that smile, however disarming it first appeared, made him feel uneasy.</p><p>If the feelings in his stomach had been of the negative variety he could easily have dealt with them, that he was used to. He was sure that the warmth that was slowly gobbling him up like a swarm of demented butterflies was <em>not</em> something a shinobi ought to feel and as he had no idea of how to deal with the new sensation, he chose to stare blankly at the teenager that was the root of the problem.</p><p>Maybe if he stared long enough, the problem would go away.</p><p>As it turned out, "it" didn't.</p><p> </p><p>Despite his earlier misgivings, the problem that was named Umino Iruka had apparently taken his silence for acceptance and thus, Itachi found himself walking alongside the sunburned conundrum.</p><p>How that had happened, he still wasn't quite sure. He felt little inclination of befriending the child, no matter how endearing he found him.</p><p>A brief glance at the corner of his eye told Itachi that the scar that was almost cutely adorning the bridge of Iruka's nose had to be a couple of years old. No matter how he looked at it, he could recognize the old wound for what it was; those kind of scars can only come from a kunai.</p><p>If deliberate, who had caused it, and more importantly; why did he feel the need to hunt down the responsible party and kill - ahem - <em>talk</em> with them?</p><p>Again, he came to the conclusion that it was the brown-haired problem's fault. As if to add salt to the injury, said problem chose that exact moment to blind him with a smile that should be award-winning, if not outright forbidden.</p><p>Itachi wondered who he might have offended for life to seemingly hate him.</p><p> </p><p>If it had been left up to the ebony-haired prodigy, he never would have spoken to the child with the scarred nose again.</p><p> </p><p>The self-assigned mission of SMD, also known as Solving the Mystery of the Dolphin, which was <em>also</em> known as Umino Iruka, took him less than 2 hours to complete.</p><p>Not that the Problem he for some reason kept seeking out was in any way boring, it was just that there was little to no data available. Dead parents. No friends. No extraordinary talents. All the Dolphin seemed to have going for him was an unusual name, which, when taken into consideration, wasn't really that much to brag about.</p><p>If Itachi had been more prone to coming up with conspiracy theories, then he might have found that strange.</p><p>As he wasn't, however, he decided to keep those pitifully useless files closed. He could never quite forget, though, the boy's origin. It must've been odd, to live on his own in a village so different from the one his parents hailed from to the point that discarded village had been nicknamed "the Bloody Mist".</p><p>Itachi wasn't judging, however. They all had pasts that was less than stellar. Konoha was neither better nor worse off, even if their graduation exam hadn't reached quite the barbaric means as Kirigakure had.</p><p>He tried to imagine the Umino child as a Kiri-nin, and found that he couldn't. Maybe it was the way of the Leaf, but Itachi just couldn't see the Dolphin butchering any classmates no matter if his life would have depended on it.</p><p>Perhaps that had been one of the reasons the Umino couple had chosen to settle in Konohagakure, where their future offspring would be able to live without staining their hands in the blood of their peers.</p><p>"A Kirigakure graduation". Itachi could not imagine having to undergo that kind of horror.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The sun shone, and he basked in the light. It felt good, to stand next to the teen beside him. To be out there, barefoot and listening to the music of nature caressing his eardrums; a rustling of leaves as one wind asked the trees for a playful dance, a lone bird chirping in content.</p><p>Itachi would like nothing more than to stay in that fashion, in that moment more of a wood elfling than shinobi.</p><p>Walking silently side by side, warm hands in a strong hold, the two friends enjoying an afternoon without responsibilities or increasing worries over clan matters.</p><p>During their conversation of daily pleasantries, sitting on top of a few rocks next to a stream, Itachi picked up a faint squeaking noise.</p><p>"Stay. I'll investigate," he murmured, brushing off his pants as he rose from the ground, placing a hand on Iruka's shoulder.</p><p>It was a squirrel, a fairly young one at that. One leg pitifully bent. Holding the small creature with a careful gentleness, Itachi looked to his older companion.</p><p>Risu-chan, was the name they decided on. Simplistic, yes, but good enough. If the squirrel objected to the name, it never voiced it.</p><p> </p><p>Upon his return home, his other not-secret friend met him by the gates of the compound.</p><p>"So, you've been... busy," Shisui said slowly, fishing for details. "Hn," Itachi replied unhelpfully. "Not really."</p><p>That was the last time they ever spoke, and if Itachi had known that then, he would have asked Shisui to never seeking out the shady subdivision of the ANBU.</p><p> </p><p>It was strange, how nobody seemed to have noticed the disappearance of Shisui. He was already dead by the time Itachi found him.</p><p>The cool body soaked by deathly still water, and those astonishingly expressive eyes... <em>gone</em>. Empty sockets stared up at him, in a silent accusation.</p><p>A chill ran down his spine. Cradling the corpse with shaking hands, Itachi let out a piercing scream.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>This slightly diverges from canon, which is why Iruka's parents were given names of my own choosing rather than the ones they had in the series.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter II - Breaking ties/You're the only one (Epilogue)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>This chapter is written mainly from Itachi's POV.<br/>Had hoped to have more from Iruka's, sadly all but one of his scenes were cut.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>The story has come to an end.<br/>I must say it was a surprise for me how it turned out to be a notch gloomier than what I had originally anticipated.<br/>While I admittedly cannot write fluff to save my life, I had thought this would be about those niceties childhood friendships are all about.<br/>My muse (aka Skillet) decided otherwise.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Things went rapidly downhill after his best friend had ended his life at the pond.</p><p>It did not make matters any less delicate that some clan members had started to question the circumstances of Shisui's untimely death.</p><p>Whether the suicide had been out of his own volition or not, the suspicion and pressure, not to mention <em>guilt</em>, was eating at him.</p><p>Who was to blame? Who had <em>dared</em>? Itachi didn't know, and when he found himself surrounded by eyes looking down on him, the grim visage of his father, teary-eyed expression of his mother, he didn't know where to turn and barely knew how to breathe.</p><p><em>It wasn't me!</em> He wanted to shout it out for the whole village to hear, even as those members of his clan who were supposed to be on his side were slowly walking away while muttering between themselves as though they thought Itachi deaf to their accusations.</p><p>His eyes met with his father's, and he had to stop himself from lashing out at the doubt he could see in them. Shisui was his best friend, and they believed he had killed him.</p><p>They actually believed him capable of killing his cousin and mutilating his body for his eyes. Maybe, if Itachi hadn't still been reeling from the shock upon discovering his best friend in the pond, maybe if the horror of discovering that his eyes had been harvested in a most cruel way, Itachi wouldn't feel quite so... empty... so utterly numb.</p><p>The world was still spinning but Itachi couldn't care for it, not at the moment. Walking slowly towards his room, the daze that held him subsided only after he had closed the door heavily behind him.</p><p>"Shisui," he muttered, his voice uncomfortably thick, an unfamiliar tone to it that could only be described as grief.</p><p>With droplets of tears staining his pillow, Itachi fell into a restless sleep.</p><p>He left the compound the next day as soon as he had woken up, not able to stand being surrounded by people who thought him so callous. There was only one place to go.</p><p>The tree was there waiting for him. As was the squirrel who offered him an acorn upon noticing his new benefactor appeared to be shrouded in a much darker aura than the day they had first met.</p><p>Chuckling slightly, Itachi accepted the nut. The squirrel seemed pleased by that decision and settled contentedly, half-hidden from view, in Itachi's thick, dark hair.</p><p>It would be a few hours before Iruka would arrive, assuming he'd actually turn up at all, but Itachi felt slightly better while waiting.</p><p>The occasional chirping into his ear by Risu-chan helped to calm his nerves as well.</p><p>Perhaps, when Iruka did turn up he wouldn't notice anything was amiss at all. Of course, Iruka did notice.</p><p> </p><p>Not much time had passed, a few weeks at the most, before he was approached by <em>that man</em>.</p><p>He did not know whether to trust him, fearing his intentions to be nefarious, though he couldn't see much alternatives left at his disposal.</p><p>Time was running out, Itachi could feel it, and although peace and the possible salvation of his clan was all that he wished for; he was lost without Shisui.</p><p>He just couldn't cope with it.</p><p>Perhaps he should try to reason with the Third, but for whatever reason, when he met the searching, <em>judging(?)</em> gaze of the Hokage, he kept his silence on the matter.</p><p> </p><p>It was then of course, that Danzō chose to come up with his ultimatum.</p><p>After the meeting with the leader of Root, the world seemed to loose reason for a moment.</p><p>Had he understood the gravitas of the task at hand? Yes, he had. He did not like it. Had it always been his fate, from the moment he was born? <em>'Iruka, what should I do?'</em></p><p>Perhaps, if he had not been part of the main family, if he hadn't been the eldest son, things wouldn't have weighted on his heart as it did the day his clan was killed.</p><p>Perhaps, if he had been born as someone else, he would have been able to stay with his brother and the only friend he had left.</p><p>As always, his friend met him in the clearing, the same one where they had climbed trees and one day found the injured squirrel that Dolphin had nurtured back to health.</p><p>"Stay," he told his only friend with a faint pleading look to his eyes. "You're the only one who believes in me." And wasn't that the truth. It didn't hurt any less though.</p><p>Iruka, the tactful and ever-gentle, thankfully never felt the need to know about what had happened at the compound to upset him, and instead pulled him into an embrace, his arms folding carefully around Itachi from behind, resting his chin on top of Itachi's shoulder.</p><p>"Okay," was his response to Itachi's request for comfort, and Itachi only loved him more for it.</p><p> </p><p>It was time to say goodbye.</p><p>The eyes he loved to drown into was shimmering with unshed tears. Soft, full lips moving in a silent protest</p><p>Itachi couldn't hear any sound as the world around them seemed to grow colder. It was time to go, yet he hesitated.</p><p>His heart clenched in regret, the dull ache all too familiar.</p><p><em>'I'm sorry, Iruka,'</em> he wanted to say. The words died on his tongue before they could give voice to the pain.</p><p>It wasn't fair, though he knew what must be done. For the village, for his brother. The Tsukuyomi was a genjutsu he hadn't yet had much opportunity to use, even so it was almost childishly easy to put his friend under it.</p><p>It took mere seconds for the genjutsu to end, with Iruka knocked out cold before he had touched the ground. Catching the body of his falling friend, Itachi held the boy close in a brief moment before setting the boy down onto the grass.</p><p>With his sharingan still active, Itachi took in every pore, every worry line etched on his friend's young face. When he was certain that Iruka's visage had been permanently branded into his memory, he relaxed slightly, his sharingan deactivated.</p><p>Sensing the shadow creeping up behind him, Itachi shunshined, with the intent of returning to the compound.</p><p>He commenced the first part of his mission with no feeling in his seemingly frozen face.</p><p>The crimson liquid drenched him from head to foot, the odor violating his sense of smell; it was enough to make him physically ill, and at any other time he would've thrown up.</p><p>It seemed oddly fitting, that tears was staining his cheeks. He made no attempt to stop crying.</p><p>His soul would never be cleansed, the sins already eating him up.</p><p>It felt good though that those painful tears was steadily flowing; an unmistakable, irrefutable proof that no matter how messed up a monster he felt with hands stained in the blood of his brethren - he was still human.</p><p>That small shred of humanity Shimura Danzō hadn't managed to rob him of was all he could cling onto for several years to come.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Clan-killer.</p><p>That was what he was. It mattered not the reason why, people would never know.</p><p>His brother hated him. That, he decided, was a small mercy.</p><p>With time, after he was gone, the only person who actually mattered to him, would be able to move on. He could be content with that.</p><p>If there had once been another boy with a scar across his face who had used to matter, he chose to ignore it.</p><p>That boy had grown into a man; he never needed him.</p><p>Sometimes though, during those fleeting moments when he allowed himself to feel, he thought about dolphins.</p><p>Had the dolphin fulfilled that ambition of transformation? Was he a butterfly?</p><p>He most likely had forgotten those days of lost innocence.</p><p> </p><p>Meanwhile, the boy turned into a man, chuunin Umino Iruka, kept his thoughts to himself as he listened to Naruto tell him about Sasuke and Hatake's encounter with the pair of rogue nins.</p><p>Nobody knew that the clan-killer had once been a young boy who had listened patiently to Iruka's worries with a wistful smile hidden in the corner of his mouth.</p><p>Nobody was to know that Iruka had gifted the aforementioned boy with a bottle of soap bubbles.</p><p>The joyous laughter was also one of the secrets he kept for himself, even if he found it unfair that the scowling raven-haired boy that was stubbornly holding onto his role as an "avenger" had never had the chance of experiencing it.</p><p>Sasuke truly had never known just how loving Itachi could be... <em>had</em> been.</p><p>Even now, Iruka mourned the loss of his friend in solitude.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>The chapter was initially going to be longer (more like expanding into a third chapter) but after some rewriting,<br/>unnecessary filler scenes removed, and some more rewriting, it ended up being around 1.4K long.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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